Thursday, March 4, 2010

Unemployment and Mortgage Delinquency

From the Calculated Risk blog this graph to which I added the label for Oregon's datapoint. Oregon is among the highest unemployment rate states, but is well below other states with similarly high unemployment rates in mortgage delinquencies and foreclosure.

This begs the question as to why this is? Are unemployed Oregonians over-represented in the renter population relative to the national average (and if so why? - two theories: the preponderance of young migrants and the limitations on building new houses), were Oregonians less likely to have gone for sub-prime loans (answer: yes, somewhat)? Ideas?

1 comment:

Doug Gabbard said...

I wonder if change in home values might be another explanatory variable.